Sexual assaults and violent rages... Inside the dark world of Buddhist teacher Sogyal Rinpoche 36 Sogyal Rinpoche as a guest speaker at a healing seminar in Melbourne in 2004&nbsp;CREDIT:&nbsp;GETTY IMAGES &nbsp;Mick Brown&nbsp; 21 SEPTEMBER 2017 • 6:00AMIn August last year, Sogyal Rinpoche, the Tibetan lama whose bookThe Tibetan Book of Living and Dying&nbsp;has sold more than three million copies around the world, and made him probably the best known Tibetan Buddhist teacher after the Dalai Lama, gave his annual teaching at his French centre Lerab Ling. Sogyal’s organisation Rigpa - a Tibetan word meaning the essential nature of mind - has more than 100 centres in 40 countries around the world, but Lerab Ling, situated in rolling countryside in L’Hérault is the jewel in the crown. Boasting what is said to be the largest Tibetan Buddhist temple in the West, it was formally opened in 2008 by the&nbsp;Dalai Lama, with Carla Bruni Sarkozy, then France’s first lady, and a host of other dignitaries in attendance. Sogyal is regarded by his students as a living embodiment of the Buddhist teachings of wisdom and compassion, but a man who teaches in a highly unorthodox way, known as ‘crazy wisdom’. Sogyal Rinpoche At Lerab Ling, more than 1000 students were gathered in the temple as he walked on stage, accompanied by his attendant, a Danish nun named Ani Chokyi. Sogyal, who is 70, is a portly, bespectacled man who requires a footstool to mount the throne from which he customarily teaches. Approaching the throne, he paused, then turned suddenly and punched the nun hard in the stomach. ‘I guess the footstool wasn’t in exactly the right position,’ says Gary Goldman, an American student of more than 20 years standing, who was seated in one of the front rows. ‘He had this flash of anger, and he just punched her - a short gut punch. It just stunned me. I thought, what the hell’s that about? Everybody around me kind of sucked their breath in. She started crying, and he told her to leave, get out, and then he started to talk.' ‘To see the master not as a human being but as the Buddha himself,’ Sogyal has often told his students, ‘is the source of the highest blessing.’ Those attending his teachings are cautioned not to be surprised or to draw ‘the wrong conclusions’ about the way he might behave. Apparently irrational, even violent conduct, it is said, should be viewed as ‘mere appearance’. But punching a nun in the stomach...&nbsp;‘Afterwards, everybody was trying to make sense of &nbsp;what had happened,’ Goldman says. ‘People were very upset.’ It was customary for students at the retreat to email any thoughts or questions they might have on the day’s teachings to Sogyal’s senior instructors. As a young man, Goldman was a US Army Ranger who served in Vietnam. ‘We all wrote something up,’ he says. ‘I said, I understood his methods were unconventional but punching Ani Chökyi was knocking the ball out of the park. 'I’ve seen this kind of thing in the military and we don’t do that anymore - at least not legally. But on the other hand, if this was another part of his ‘crazy wisdom’ teaching, we seriously needed to talk about it...’ The next day, one of the Rigpa hierarchy addressed the doubters. Sogyal, he said, was upset that people should be questioning his methods. If people didn’t understand what had actually happened, then they probably weren’t ready for the promised higher-level teachings, and Sogyal would not teach again during the retreat. ‘This is what he does,’ Goldman says, ‘when something comes up &nbsp;he’ll very skillfully manipulate his students to get them back in line. I just thought, I’m done with this...’ A catalogue of damning allegations Largely thanks to the benign, smiling example of the&nbsp;Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism has grown enormously in popularity in the West over the past thirty years, largely escaping the scandal that has dogged other religious institutions - at least publicly. Within the Buddhist community, however, Sogyal Rinpoche has long been a controversial figure. For years, rumours have circulated on the internet about his behaviour, and in the 1990s a lawsuit alleging sexual and physical abuse was settled out of court. Yet his position as one of the foremost Buddhist teachers in the West has remained remarkably intact - until now. &nbsp;In July, eight senior and long-standing current and former students sent a 12-page letter to Sogyal. ‘Long simmering issues with your behaviour,’ it began, ‘can no longer be ignored or denied’, going on to list a catalogue of damning allegations against him. The Dalai Lama and Sogyal Rinpoche, talks with French Foreign Affairs minister Bernard Kouchner during the inauguration of the Buddhist Lerab Ling temple&nbsp;CREDIT:&nbsp;PASCAL GUYOT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Sogyal’s habitual physical abuse, the letter alleged, had ‘left monks, nuns, and lay people students of yours with bloody injuries and permanent scars.’ &nbsp;He had used his role as a teacher ‘to gain access to young women, and to coerce, intimidate and manipulate them into giving you sexual favours’. Students had been ordered to strip, ‘to show you our genitals’, ‘to give you oral sex,’ and ‘to have sex in your bed with our partners’. Sogyal, it went on, had led a ‘lavish, gluttonous and sybaritic lifestyle’, which had been kept secret from the large body of his followers, and financed by donations by students ‘who believe their offering is being used to further wisdom and compassion in the world.’ ‘If your striking and punching us and others, and having sex with your students and married women, and funding your sybaritic lifestyle with students’ donations is actually the ethical and compassionate behaviour of a Buddhist teacher, please explain to us how it is.’ Copied to the Dalai Lama, and Sogyal’s most senior students, the letter quickly went viral, shaking the foundation of Rigpa to the core. For Sogyal Rinpoche himself it was the prelude to the most spectacular fall from grace. From Tibet to Cambridge More than just a sordid story of an errant spiritual teacher, the case of Sogyal Rinpoche is a symptom of the perils that may arise when Westerners fall in thrall to esoteric spiritual teachings they may not fully understand, and when Eastern teachers are exposed to the glamour and temptations of celebrity worship. Sogyal Lakar was born in Kham, in the east of Tibet, into a family of traders. Among his followers, he is believed to be the reincarnation of Sogyal Terton, a Tibetan lama who was a teacher of the 13th Dalai Lama (the present Dalai Lama is the 14th). But according to Rob Hogendoorn, a Dutch academic and Buddhist who has researched Sogyal’s background, the only authority for that claim appears to be Sogyal’s own mother. Sogyal had little formal Buddhist training, and it is notable that few in the Tibetan community have ever attended his teachings. &nbsp; <img class="responsive" src="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/con..." srcset="/content/dam/men/2017/09/20/Sogyal_Richard_Gere_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpg?imwidth=480 480w,/content/dam/men/2017/09/20/Sogyal_Richard_Gere_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpg?imwidth=960 960w,/content/dam/men/2017/09/20/Sogyal_Richard_Gere_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpg?imwidth=580 580w,/content/dam/men/2017/09/20/Sogyal_Richard_Gere_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpg?imwidth=1160 1160w,/content/dam/men/2017/09/20/Sogyal_Richard_Gere_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpg?imwidth=620 620w,/content/dam/men/2017/09/20/Sogyal_Richard_Gere_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpg?imwidth=1240 1240w" alt="Sogyal Rinpoche pictured with Buddhist teacher Joan Halifax and Richard Gere in Switzerland, 1985" style="box-sizing: bord